Ventings from a guy with an unhealthy interest in budgets, policy, the dismal science, life in the Upper Midwest, and brilliant beverages.

Monday, August 31, 2015

Your Monday Charlie

Charlie Pierce's political blog at Esquire.com is one of the best political sites going, and if you're not reading him, you're just falling behind. One of Charlie's traditional Monday columns involves a rundown/evisceration of the idiocy that passes for the weekly Sunday morning "serious politics" shows. Another one of Charlie's long-running topics has been the rise (and now fall) of Scott Walker, and the scary combination of idiocy, cynicism, and abuse of power that has defined his 4 1/2 year reign of error in this state.

Well, both of these got put together this weekend in an epic showcase of Walker's foolishness, when he visited NBC's Chuck Todd on Meet the Press , and Charlie just had to respond.

Let's start with the single most hilarious thing said by any candidate in the current field. Asked about the possibility of building a fence, not along the country's southern border, but along the nearly 4000-mile border that separates the United States and Canada, this is what Walker told my man Chuck Todd.

"Some people have asked us about that in New Hampshire…They have raised some very legitimate concerns, including some law enforcement folks that brought that up to me at one of our town hall meetings about a week and a half ago. So that's a legitimate issue for us to look at."

There is some ensuing flubdubbery about "securing the homeland" and about "counterintellig…er…ah…wubba…wubba…counterterrorism" in there, too, but consider the vast and staggering vista of stupidity opened up by the idea of building a fence from upper Maine to the shores of the Pacific. Leave aside the basic impracticality of the entire idea – What the hell are you going to do about that part of the border that runs through Lake Superior? Submarine nets? Sonar? Volunteer muskie fishermen with AK's in their boats? Yikes. Forget I said that last part. – and concentrate solely on the fact that, what Walker believes makes this a "legitimate issue for us to look at" is the fact that "some people" at a town hall meeting in New Hampshire brought it up to him. I will pay anyone a shiny buffalo nickel if they will show up at a future town hall meeting in New Hampshire and ask Scott Walker if we should fire sharks with frickin' laser beams on their heads into synchronous low earth orbit to prevent undocumented immigrants from Zontar from entering the country. It probably would be declared a "legitimate issue for us to look at."

(And this is not even to mention the fact that, apparently, Walker is opposed to people crossing our Canadian border but has no problem at all with the world's dirtiest fossil fuel being pumped across that same border and through the richest farmland in the United States. Tar sands don't kill people. People kill people.)

And apparently Chuckles ("It's not My Job to Tell People the Facts") Todd tried to cover up this wall-building statement, and didn't show it to the regular viewers of Press the Meat. C'mon Chuck! Walker is at 6% nationwide and has plummeted to 5th place in Iowa. I think you can risk going after this guy, because any star Walker had is spectacularly crashing to earth, and he won't be someone whose ass Chuck needs to kiss in order to keep access to Scotty at a later point.

Walker has gone far beyond absurd, and I'm sick of this dimwit "representing" my state, taking my tax dollars to do everything BUT work in the state's best interest, and making everyone else across the country ask "What the hell is wrong with Wisconsinites?" And this was entirely preventable, but our state's media decided that taking Walker's ad money and promoting him to the nation was preferable over keeping the state's economy and integrity intact. And they should pay every bit the price Scotty and his followers will as this campaign sinks out of sight at the national level.

About Me

This cat's a 40-something libation-enjoying gabber still trying to do the right thing. Watch his crazy adventures as he works and stumbles his way through the great world of public service in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan, while keeping tabs on Bucky Badger and the next Great Depression. I'm told I'm big in Oshkosh.